The Slayer (1982)
The Slayer was the first VIPCO sell-thru tape i ever bought so i've always had a soft spot for this often clumsy film.
The main problem for director
JS Cardone, best known as the screenwriter for remakes of
Prom Night and
The Stepfather, is the lack of characters. With only four central protagonists to work with the killings have to be rather spaced out during the film's 90 minute running time, and there aren't really enough bloody deaths to sustain it, so we are left with many a sequence being far too talky and others of bland exposition "It's from my dreams".
Having been negative so far the film just about gets by without becoming boring. It's beach front location is interesting and well utilized and Cardone gives proceedings an almost Gothic like atmosphere. The creature itself is a splendid creation - a gnarly skeletal figure, and the gore effects well realized.
I realise what i'm about to say leaves me open to a lot of ridicule but i prefer the old VIPCO dvd release of
The Slayer to Arrow's sparkling 4K print.
In all truth it's not a very good film and pales in comparison to many slashers of the time. The old VIPCO release wasn't bad in the picture quality stakes, in fact it was for the most part quite sharp especially when upscaled but at the same time it was also quite badly marked with a light sheen on it's right hand side during the darkly lit scenes. However this damage also gave the film a kind of mystical atmosphere which suited the film's dream like premise, giving an impression of peering into a grotesque netherworld, an impression that the newly restored print totally loses. Arrow's release is polished and slick looking (Incidentally two words never usually associated with director
JS Cardone) with much of the weirdness lost, leaving us with a distinctly average and rather talky slasher film which takes an eternity to get going and doesn't really have enough murder set pieces to sustain it's ninety minute run time.